as you may know barack obama is a student of history. he learned two things in particular from the greatest president in history abraham lincoln. one when putting together a cabinet you need assemble a team of rivals and two, you cannot kill a vampire with an axe. you need a built-in shotgun in that mother humper. lincoln the vampire. [ laughter ] [ laughter ] didn't take off like we thought it would. [ laughter ] but to the first point when it came time to choose a secretary of defense barack obama demonstrated lincoln-esque team rivalling by choosing former nebraska senator chuck haaag -- hagge -- hagel. [ laughter ] he is a republican. a two term senator, vietnam vet. he was a simple process away from achieving that relatively only minor as secretary of lincoln's legacy but still it was doing this having hagel or doing that and you know, nobody wants to see that. >> the one thing i'm not going to do is vote on a new secretary of defense until the old secretary of defense leon panetta, who i like very much, testifies about what happene